my face-wash is a whitening cream
but what if i don't want to be white?
what if i just want my skin to be clean
since when did white and clean begin to come in the same package?
are white people the poster-children of cleanliness
because they've washed their hands
with the blood of my ancestors?

am i *****
because i have not?

it bothers me when my grandmother tells me
that i am lucky
because i was born the fairer one of the two sisters
she says she fears for what i would have looked like
had my colored mother not fallen in love with a white man
mixing her ***** genes with his pure ones
to create a mix-bred child, who, in any case
was better than being born brown.

it would have been a sin
for me to have colored skin

i am still dealing with the remnants of my colonial past
because i am still afraid of telling my mother
that i am in love with a colored man
she will accept him because he is loving and kind
but in the back of her mind
there will be a little voice that whispers
wouldn't it have been better if he was white instead?

and i've heard a lot of people tell me
"thank God your hair is the right kind of curly
not the frizzy, afro-like hair
wild and free
thank God your hair is tame
thank God your hair falls in neat little curls
(you got your dad’s genes!)
thank God
we can hold it
and mold it
into what we like
thank God your hair is the right
kind of curly."

you see my mom escaped by marrying a man with white skin
but with me the cycle begins again
because he's two shades darker
and my children will be too
the white genes of their grandfather
lost
among the dark genes of their father-
with chocolate eyes and hazel skin

i am still struggling to see at my father
as one of "us" and not one of *"them"

They warn us that fever travels in the air,
so women pull the shutters closed and keep
children out of the empty, heady streets.
Grandpa tries to assure me we are safe,
that yellow fever will stop when the ports
close. He never speaks of how the victims suffer,
shuts the curtains against my anxious eyes
as the bodies are removed, but rumors catch
the breezes, too.

Vomiting, bleeding from the nose and mouth,
the eyes yellow, and then victims reach out
in a last fit of delirium, demanding forgiveness
from God’s wrath as He turns them the sallow
shade of the September sun. This is the color
of a body when salvation fractures
from the depths of their souls.

Each day, the count of the dead rises.
My cousin, the milkman, a widow down the block—
all pass within hours. The Quakers deem
this the Almighty’s will, his “rod.” Physicians
bleed the sick, and I think not to rid them of disease,
but to account for sin.

We all hope for frost. I know Grandpa will not leave
the city, but I do not imagine his eyes yellowing,
for pride keeps them clear of exhaustion
and glaze from inviting liquor or laudanum.

My whole body sweats from dreams
of corpses the color of tobacco-stained teeth,
blood pouring from eyes like tears, each one dropping
to the ground. I wake up, dizzy in smeared-red sheets,
my nightgown smelling like a mausoleum, but I do not
call for help because I’ve been waiting to look
into the face of God, to see my yellowed city’s reflection.